Neighborhood

Well friends, here's the first post! It's been about a month since I arrived. I've been busy making some new friends, settling into my apartment, kicking off the school year in a new community, learning how to cook Japanese food, exploring this crazy town by bicycle, and getting an old-time band going with my friends Bosco and Heja.

It's been great so far, but all of the hard work and stress caught up with me last week and I'm still dealing with a bad case of tonsillitis. I don't know if it was being sick so far from home, or because the excitement and hubbub around the move has started to wane, but I really began to miss my friends and family this week; it kind of hit me all at once. Good grief, I'm really far away from all of you and I won't see you until next summer! (Unless you come to visit before then. Please do!)

So I decided to get the blog up and running this weekend. Today wasn't the best weather for a Kyoto photo shoot, but I think you'll get a sense of what things look like around here. Just keep in mind that it's not always dreary and overcast.

This first post is all about my neighborhood. I hope you'll get a picture of where I live and what I see when I step out the front door and hop on my bicycle. Check back soon for posts about bicycles, school, and old-time music in Japan. (Have you, for instance, ever heard Okinawa music?)

Missing you!

-Isaac

Click on the pics to see them American-sized

This is my home. I'm on the bottom floor, which minimizes the number of neighbors driven slowly insane by incessant fiddle and banjo music. The inside is huge by Japanese standards and it's pretty darn big by U.S. standards.



Just a few steps from my front door.



This is looking up the street from my apartment (on the left). The big trees in the distance are at Kitano Tenmangu, a huge Shinto Shrine where a festival and antique flea market is held on the 25th of each month.



Kitano Tenmangu Shrine



The observation that "Japan is an eclectic mix of the old and the new" is a little cliched, but it is really striking in Kyoto; especially in my neighborhood, which is the old textile and kimono weaving district.




The neighborhoods are full of tiny streets and alleys with wonderful surprises, colors, and textures:












The Japanese are really into efficiency:






Urban and dense? You bet, but there are hints of nature all over the place. People are really into container gardens in Kyoto:










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